NFL draft 'like a dream' for former Colorado State stars

While 98 players from CSU have been selected in the NFL draft, only five have gone in the first round.

Apr. 24, 2013

CSU defensive lineman Mike Bell, at left, was the No. 2 overall selection in the 1979 NFL draft. Gary Glick, from top right, Kevin McLain, Mark Mullaney and Kelly Stouffer were also first-round picks out of Colorado State University. / Courtesy of Colorado State University

CSU's Gary Glick was the No. 1 overall pick in the 1956 NFL draft. / Courtesy of Colorado State University

CSU defensive end Mark Mullaney was selected in the first round of the 1975 NFL draft by the Minnesota Vikings / Courtesy of Colorado State University

CSU quarterack Kelly Stouffer, now a college football analyst for ESPN, was the No. 6 pick overall in the 1987 NFL draft. / Courtesy of Colorado State University

More

ADVERTISEMENT

Mike Bell was coming off surgery to repair a torn medial collateral ligament that kept him out of the Hula and Senior bowl college all-star games.

Although he was a consensus All-American in 1978, he had played on a CSU team that went just 5-6 overall and appeared on television just once, losing 32-6 in the second game of the season at Brigham Young in an ABC regional telecast.

So, Bell was stunned when he got a phone call the night before the draft from the Kansas City Chiefs, the team he grew up cheering for in his native Wichita, Kan., to inform him they were going to select him with the No. 2 overall pick.

“Who would have ever thought No. 2 overall with a knee injury?’’ Bell said earlier this week from Wichita, where he is in the real estate business.

Bell, a 6-foot-4, 255-pound defensive lineman, had been examined by enough team doctors and met with enough coaches and general managers to know he was going to be selected in the draft. But until that phone call, he had no idea only one player would be picked ahead of him — Ohio State linebacker Tom Cousineau by the Buffalo Bills. There were no draft analysts in the media at the time. ESPN didn’t begin broadcasting until the following fall, and the Internet — as we know it — wasn’t available for public use for another 16 years.

“I always joke about it, because when I got drafted they didn’t have the thing in New York (where most first-round picks are introduced in person after their selection). There were no cellphones, USA Today wasn’t around. It was a huge deal for the university and a huge deal for me.”

Ninety-eight players from Colorado State University have been selected in the NFL draft, beginning with Chet Maeda and Lou Dent in 1943. But only five have gone in the first round.

Defensive back Gary Glick, who still lives in Fort Collins and runs an investment company, was the No. 1 overall selection in 1956 by the Pittsburgh Steelers. Defensive end Mark Mullaney went to the Minnesota Vikings in 1975 as the No. 25 pick overall. Linebacker Kevin McLain was the No. 26 pick in 1976, taken by the Los Angeles Rams. And quarterback Kelly Stouffer was the No. 6 pick overall in 1987, selected by the St. Louis Cardinals, who immediately traded his rights to the Seattle Seahawks.

(Page 2 of 2)

Glick didn’t respond to several requests this week to discuss his draft experience.

Stouffer, CSU’s all-time leader in passing yards (7,142) and completions (577) knew he’d be a first-round pick after talking to scouts at the East-West Shrine all-star game and attending the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis. But he wasn’t expecting to go quite that high, and he certainly wasn’t expecting to be picked by the Cardinals, a team “I had no contact with in any way shape or form before the draft,’’ he said from his home near Chadron, Neb.

Stouffer played quarterback for the Seahawks for five seasons, two as the starter. Now a college football analyst for ESPN, he said he doesn’t have time to follow the pro game closely anymore, and his only interest in the draft these days is to see where some of the players he’s met as a broadcaster are selected.

Bell says he’ll never forget the day he was drafted. He went on to play 12 seasons with the Chiefs, seven as a starter, and still does some community relations work for the team. Every year during the draft, he is reminded of his own experience.

He waited as long as he could after his own selection to see where his twin brother, Mark E. Bell, a CSU defensive end, would be drafted before being whisked away from the Fort Collins hotel where he and his family had gathered to the Denver airport to catch a flight to Kansas City. He said the pilot on the plane informed him as he was getting off that his brother had been selected in the fourth round by the Seattle Seahawks.

“It was like a dream, and it all became reality,’’ Mike Bell said.

“Overnight, everything changed for me. You go to Kansas City, and people recognize you and they want your autograph. Even all these years later, people remember me.